How to Make It in Life

So I went out and bought my own digital camera because I was so jealous of my sister's. It was kind of expensive and I'll probably regret it later, but I'm happy now. So here's a vibrantly-colored picture from my very own camera of some plants that my girlfriend planted for me as a welcome back surprise. What a sweetie.

It's a mixture of marigolds and tomato plants. The marigolds are supposed to attract wasps that lay eggs on those disgusting caterpillars that eat tomato plants, so when the eggs hatch, the baby wasps eat the caterpillars from the inside out. I'm sorry if you were eating when you read that, but that's nature! Last summer I tried growing tomatoes for the first time, with disastrous results. Not only did my tomato plants get eaten, but they wouldn't produce tomatoes. Three plants produced a total of five edible tomatoes the entire summer. This year, with a more disease resistant variety and more fertilizer, I hope to have bushels and bushels to share with my friends and neighbors.

Back in L.A. Actually, I got back Monday night, but Tuesday was spent unpacking and cleaning and buying food and making sure everything was in working order. Tomorrow, which is today, I will check in at work and see what they have for me. I hope there were no disasters while I was away. Last time I took a trip, someone broke my computer. And the boss was too cheap to fix it. So I had to use a really slow crappy one -- which I'm still using. Oh well, it's all good. I bought some strawberries and ice cream and made some strawberry shakes tonight, which the lady loved, and which I loved too, but for which I am now suffering for in the lactose intolerance department. Well, perhaps she's suffering more for it, if you get my drift, which I hope you don't, in the olfactory sense at least.

I'll be flying back to L.A. tomorrow. But before I go, here's a couple of pictures I took today of some weird lizards. I think they're a sort of gecko, but I can't be sure. I never saw them growing up, but I think they're everywhere now. So they're probably non-native, but they sure look purdy.

Home from the wedding. It was really nice. So humid though. We were worried that it was gonna rain because it had been raining all week, but today was nice and sunny, which was great, but I think there was way too much evaporation going on.

Anyway, they liked the photo montage, which was a relief. I think I almost broke the projector though -- thank goodness it came back to life.

I have some pictures. It's from the wedding, but not necessarily of the wedding.


Here's the place.





Here's a guy fishing in the ocean next to the place.





Here's a lizard on a tree.





Here's the beach after the wedding.

Since I've been here, I've been eating non-stop. And so, despite my somewhat high metabolism, I've been putting on the pounds! It's just that all the food I've missed while I've been away is now in abundance, and I just can't help it! I guess I have to get it while I'm here, so that's my excuse. I'm sure when I get back to L.A., I'll lose it all as I go back to the best diet in the world -- my own cooking.

As for the weather, it's been overcast and raining the whole time. But whatever the weather is like tomorrow, I'm definitely gonna take some pictures and post them here. That's because tomorrow's my friend's wedding! I hope I remember to bring the camera though, because I also have to also take down a projector, a stereo and a screen in order to project a photo montage at the reception. Hopefully it all goes smoothly! We're renting the projector today, so I have to figure out how to work it by then. Yikes.

When you drunkenly vomit out of the window of your friend's car, decorating his car door with the pizza he bought for you earlier that evening, it's kinda funny.

When you do it again a few years later when you're a little older and should know better -- it's still kinda funny. But also kinda sad.

Monday night, four of my friends and I went to see the University of Hawaii basketball team beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers in an exciting NIT tournament game. I know, the NIT is not the NCAA tournament, but it's still awesome, you snobs.

Before the game, we went to a local bar to kill some time. I bought the group some fries and a pitcher of beer.

At the game, it was a very loud and rowdy atmosphere, and we yelled ourselves hoarse. So we had to buy more beer to soothe our throats.

After Hawaii won, we went to the nearby bar/pizza place, where we ate pizza, which my friend so kindly bought for us, and drank more beers.

And then some foolish person suggested that we get shots. And so we had those shots, followed by five more rounds.

Afterwards, our designated driver, the one who bought us the pizza, drove us home. And along the way, I guess motion sickness came into play...

(You must know that in the past year I probably had the equivalent of one beer a week before I went on this trip. And so the tolerance isn't so high. Well, even if it was, my goodness!)

And so at a stoplight, I rolled down the window and let out a torrent of liquid pizza all over the road and a good portion of the side of my friend's car, surely frightening whatever tourists were nearby. And I pretty much did this all the way home.

And I tell this not out of foolish drunken pride, but as a lesson.

And the lesson is this: Liquor before beer, you're in the clear. Beer before liquor, you're never sicker.

Something we should've remembered!

I did the same thing in the same car four years ago (but out another window). We were in college then, so I guess I had an excuse -- we were in college! But this time, even though I'm still in my 20s, I feel like I should be beyond this sort of behavior. Oh what folly! I mean, I guess I can take consolation in the fact that at least I didn't set out to get drunk -- it just happened, heh heh. Errr. But still, as much as I think I've grown up, there are moments like this to remind me that, no, I really haven't. Oh well, check back on me in another four years, and if I've done it again, you can call me a sad old man then.

Well, the bachelor party was fun. I don't remember some of it. Now I got a massive headache. And in a few hours, I'm off to the rehearsal dinner. Must get rid of nausea. Well, sorry to disappoint, but there was no wrestling of the men. We ate dinner at this fusion Italian-Chinese restaurant, which had pretty decent food, but was so very expensive. Then we sang karaoke for nearly four hours. It was BYOB, so we BOOB, and a lot of it. We ended up playing poker afterwards, and I won $20, which is nice, because I might've either dropped a $20 bill last night or gave it to my friend. I'll have to ask him at the dinner.

Anyway, I promised some photos, but it's been overcast and gloomy since I've been here, so I don't have any sunny tropical pictures. So instead, as you can see, this is a picture of our papaya tree growing next to our back porch.

In a few hours, I'm going to my friend Dave's bachelor party. Strippers you say? No, I'm sorry, no strippers. It'll be G-rated. We're singing karaoke.

Although Dave does want to do that whole strip club thing, he also doesn't want to upset his fiancee. And so he must keep his lustful desires in check. But that's completely fine by me, because strip clubs are for losers. Might as well flush $200 down the toilet and punch yourself in the balls. Same difference.

Well, even if Dave himself doesn't feel so happy about a stripper-free bachelor party, I'm sure we'll have a good time nonetheless. We'll make him forget his worries by pouring liquor down his throat and giving him lap dances of our own. Well, the lap dances will be contingent on how drunk and Greco-Roman us boys get. Maybe the night will end up with all of us oiled up and wrestling. And then during a match, a contestant will get a boner. And then his opponent will get one too. Before you know it -- massive orgy!

By the end of it, I'm sure Dave's fiancee is gonna wish we went to a strip club.

So I'm home! Got to eat some bi bim bap, which is just rice, vegetables, meat, egg, hot pepper paste and sesame oil all mixed together. Mmmmmm. And then my sister broke out the red wine for no apparent reason, and so we got a bit tipsy. Much better food than on Hawaiian Airlines, where they passed out bags of "Tropical Mix," which one would think would have tropical nuts and berries in them, but which instead had pretzels and corn chips. Hmmm. And then for lunch, I had a cheese lasagna, which was actually not too bad, except for the gastric disturbances I had afterwards.

Tomorrow, I will be seeing friends and family. And I'll try to get photographs up on here, since my sis has a new digital camera, which I hope she'll let me use.

I need to pack. I'm flying back home tomorrow, hooray! It's nice to have grown up in Hawaii. I will be eating squid luau and plate lunches at the same time tomorrow. Hopefully I will have time to post from there. Take it easy!

A while back, in high school to be exact, I was eating some pork rinds, which was one of my favorite snack foods at the time, and which, to think back on it now, may partly explain the horrendous acne I had. Anyway, I was about to pop another piece into my mouth when I looked down and noticed some thick bristly pig whiskers still attached to it.

For some reason, it wasn’t the ugly pig hairs growing out of my food that turned my stomach -- it was the thought that I might somehow be eating some mustachioed dude who had accidentally fallen into the pig fryer.

But that thought soon left my mind, as I threw the hairy morsel away and kept eating the rest of those delicious crispy bastards.

Nowadays, I eat pork rinds in moderation, if at all. They really are disgusting, yet oh so delicious. Kinda like gelatin, which it turns out is made from boiled pig and cow hides, or so I’ve read. Pretty much any animal product is disgusting in some way, if you think about it. But there’s no way I’m gonna be a vegetarian. Meat is just too delicious. Well maybe I'll consider it when I'm in my 30s or 40s or so, when I should probably start paying more attention to my health. But until then, debauchery it is!

Normally my weekends are for sleeping in, watching TV, and lounging about, naked and decadent. But since I promised to edit one of those happy couple video/photo montages for my friend Dave’s upcoming wedding, and since he’s waited till the last minute to send all the photos to me, my weekend is now all about work.

And that’s okay, because Dave was one of my best friends growing up. He and I liked the same music, had the same sense of humor, would finish each other's sentences, all that same wavelength stuff. But perhaps because I'm reminiscing over that, I’m now somewhat…melancholy. Dave, who used to be all about the rock & roll, wants to use some really sappy songs in the montage – including not one, but two duets by Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt.

This in itself wouldn’t be cause for concern, but to me, it’s yet another painful reminder of the long slow descent into lameness Dave has succumbed to in the years since meeting his fiancée -- who happens to be a great person in her own right. Hope that last part didn’t sound too much like a disclaimer.

I guess I’m just sad that, as I’m getting ready to fly back home next week, I'm reminded more and more of how much people change, and how "you can never really go back home."

Yes, your best friend may look the same as he once did, he may walk and talk the same, but in reality he's dead inside. He's merely a zombie going through the motions. And no matter how much you scream at him, he won’t wake up!

Okay, that’s a bit mean. He's my friend after all. I mean, I’ve changed since high school, so why can’t he? He's still a cool guy, and as long as he’s happy, and his fiancée is happy - which they are - then I should just be quiet, grow up, and be happy for them.

And I am.

I'm just sad to see my friend go.

UPDATE: Dave is actually still really cool. It is I who am the asshole. Selfish, selfish asshole.

Had a day off today, which coincided with a day off for my lady, so we decided to go to Zuma Beach in Malibu.

While there, we saw dolphins surfing in the waves. I didn't have a camera, so here's someone else's picture from some other time, but it's a good representation of what we saw:



Yes, there were even surfers.

For whatever reason, our conversation soon turned to what we would name our kids if we ever one day, somewhere off in the far distant future, had kids. And so, here's a list of the names we liked.

Girls' names: Guinevere Buttercup, Deloreana, Gwendo Lynn, and Sweet Pea

Boys' names: Juanathan, Kamehameha, Michelob, Krakatoa, and Kyle

Of course, this list is all preliminary, but I think it's all good.

One of my favorite blogs, Three Wise Monkeys, is no more. Apparently, some moron repeatedly harrassed the author of TWM with vile, personal attacks, so she just finally decided to delete the entire blog. And that really sucks, because I hadn't read a lot of the archives. Oh well, here's hoping she writes again in the near future.

For now, just know that, as Celine Dion once said, my heart will go on!

My friend had me tape wrestling last night, so for the first time in about 20 years, I got to see men in speedos slap each other.

If you don't count that one night my uncle got upset with his boyfriend.

And I don't.

But guess who made an appearance on last night's show? That's right, it was none other than Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka. This is him 20 years ago:



Quite the dashing young lad, eh? Well, It was kind of a shock to see how old he looked last night. He looked like his own dad. But then again, the last time I saw him on TV was 20 years ago. So once I got over that, it was awesome.

He was there, along with The Rock, as part of a skit to set up to the latest Wrestlemania. Superfly didn't get to wrestle, which was a shame. But you know who did wrestle? Ric Flair. I'm not kidding. Isn't he like 70 years old? Well, to his credit, if Superfly Snuka looked 20 years older from when I last saw him, then Ric Flair looked exactly the same. I don't understand. He must feast upon the blood of the living.

Anyway, sorry for my wrestling reminisces. I'll stop before I segway into Transformers, GI Joe, Mask, Robotech, Jem and the Holograms and Thundercats.

It's finally starting to feel like spring. Summer actually, since it was in the mid-80s today. I had wanted to go sledding this weekend, since there was a massive snowfall in the mountains last week, but with today's weather, I didn't wanna drive all the way there only to find nothing but slush. Especially with gasoline costing like $2.20 a gallon. So instead, I went bike riding.

The only time I seem to ride my bike is to go to the neighborhood grocery store, which is about a mile away. But since the grocery clerks went on strike this past October, my bike, along with my fitness program, have been suffering from neglect. Yes, that's me, blaming the grocery strike for my laziness.

Thankfully though, the strike ended this past week, so I was able to ride to the store today, getting some much needed exercise, along with some much needed snacks, soda and ice cream.

On my way back from the store, I almost hit a dog. It barked and started chasing after me. Well, what do you expect, sleeping on the sidewalk and all, I wanted to say. But instead I had a panicked flashback to my newspaper delivery days, when as a young boy, I got bit on the foot by a terrier.

Luckily, the owner of today's dog yelled "HEY!" at either me or the dog, which was enough to get it to stop chasing me, thus averting another canine disaster and subsequent recurring nightmare.

And I wonder why I don't ride my bike more often. But it was a good day. Tomorrow, back to work.

I am a ninja
I am quite deadly
I am silent
but violent

I'm an assassin
I have throwing stars
and I'm not afraid
of throwing them

I also like to
take care of business
with my
nunchucks

I have the ability
to jump real high
I can even
slam dunk

Cloaked in darkness
in the garb of the kurogo
I stealthily creep
to Jack in the Box

My lady
can I get you something
while I'm there?
Perhaps an Oreo shake?

I am quick like a cat
I make no sound
I can also do about
thirty push-ups in a row

Are you sure
you don't want
something?
Maybe a Jumbo Jack?

No? I creep you out?
Why? Because I wear
the garb of the kurogo
to botany class?

As I steal off into the night
with my belly
full of Monster Tacos
I still feel an emptiness inside

When I was about 9 years old, I was pretty ignorant... as most 9-year-olds are. I hung around some slightly older neighborhood kids, who took it upon themselves to teach me the ways of the world. So they taught me some things that I had no way of putting into context.

For example, when my friend Ian was telling us about how he kissed a girl, my friend Mark made a circle with the index finger and thumb of his left hand, and thrust the index finger of his right hand in and out of the circle. While doing this he said, "Ohhhhhhh!" Mark started cracking up, and so did I, even though I had no idea what he was doing.

Mark, of course, was being very vulgar. But for all I knew, he was just using sign language to say, "You kissed somebody!"

Fast forward to a family gathering. I'm playing a board game with my cousins, all of whom are all older than me, ranging in age from about 11 to 14. Well, during the course of the game, the opposing team scores a lot of points, and one of my female cousins hugs and kisses her brother's friend on the cheek. He gets embarrassed, sorta making a big deal about it. So I, using my recently acquired knowledge of sign language, make a circle with my left hand, thrust my right index finger in and out of it, and say, "Ohhhhhhhh!!!"

Everyone stopped talking. And moreover, nobody was laughing. I was very confused. My cousin's friend was now turning beet red. I wanted to apologize, but I didn't know what I had done. And so one of my other female cousins points to my hands and says to me, "That doesn't exist."

My only response was, "Oh..."

The game sorta died down after that.

I was sitting at my desk at work the other day, and a female co-worker of mine stops by to have a chat. She's actually more of a higher-up than me, so we're not exactly buddy buddy. We talk about one of my current projects, and all the while, she keeps glancing over my shoulder at my computer screen. I think nothing of it, because even though I had my web browser open on what I thought was a news site, it was technically my lunch break. After a minute or so, she walks back to her office.

And so I turn back around. And there, on my computer screen, I see what had so intrigued her -- a giant pop-up ad that says, "Increase Your Penis Size."

Noooooooo!

And it looked like a web page that I had opened myself, so she must've thought I was looking to-- noooooooo!!!

I was so mortified that I just closed the ad and went back to work. I really wanted to explain myself to her, but I was afraid that would've just made me look even guiltier. She'd say something like, "Yeah yeah, sure, I understand." But she'd actually be thinking, "You sad little man." Oh, damn you pop-up ads!

So yeah, it'll be fun going back into work. I hope I don't start getting funny looks from my other co-workers. It'll be no use explaining myself at that point. No use at all!

I will be going back home for two weeks in about two weeks. My friend is getting married and I'm supposed to give a toast, I think. I hope I don't get drunk and say what I really feel. I'm just kidding. His fiancee is very cool, in that I-hate-all-my-boyfriend's-friends sort of way. But nonetheless, as I've learned, as long as my friend is happy, it's all good. Kinda like when he turned Jehovah's Witness for about six months a few years ago. I tried desparately to get him to revert back to his former debauched ways, but in the end, I said, as long as he's happy, it's all good. He eventually fell off that wagon all by himself when he mixed alcohol with hallucinogens and thought his friends were demons out to get him. Poor guy. But now, he's sober and happy and I can't wait for the very religious wedding.